The purpose of this supplemental request is to provide additional resources that will expedite the goals of recently funded COBRE award to establish and promote research in cardiovascular sciences at our two state medical schools. The goal of the South Carolina COBRE for Cardiovascular Disease is to build research infrastructure through the following strategies: 1) provide career development opportunities and mentoring for an initial cadre of 5 targeted, outstanding young investigators to develop successful, independent, National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded research careers in the cardiovascular sciences; 2) strengthen research infrastructure by providing access to critical technologies through enhancement of existing scientific cores; and 3) recruit new faculty members whose research experience and disciplinary expertise will complement those of the COBRE investigators in critical areas in order to promote collaboration and foster future programmatic development (e.g., program projects etc.,). To facilitate these goals, request is for a competitive supplement to provide special resources that will: 1) create a Xenopus Facility that provides an alternative transgenic approach to mice with very rapid throughput for gene screening; 2) establish a specialized facility for cardiovascular tissue engineering that will provide new collaborative research opportunities for COBRE personnel; 3) renovate suitable laboratory space to enable a much needed faculty recruitment in molecular pharmacology and pharmacogenomics; and 4) acquire a capillary electrophoresis system for shared use in an existing scientific core. As the MUSC serves as the primary physical home-base for this COBRE in collaboration with the University of South Carolina (USC) as a partnering institution, the proposed renovations and alterations are concentrated at MUSC where laboratory space is needed for COBRE planned recruitments in years 02 and 03. Because space for the Proteomics Core (Core D) at MUSC is being maximally utilized, the instrumentation will facilitate study of native protein interactions and housed in the Instrumentation Resource Facility (IRF) at the USC where quality space and technical support are available.